Watch Faith No More Deliver Bruising ‘Superhero’ on ‘Fallon’

Faith No More returned to television for the first time in 20 years Wednesday night, setting up shop at The Tonight Show for a performance of “Superhero” off their upcoming comeback record, Sol Invictus.

The beloved Nineties metal contrarians injected their performance with goofy new age spiritualism, donning all white outfits and arranging the stage with bouquets of flowers. But the performance of “Superhero” itself was thrillingly vicious and unrelenting, especially when singer Mike Patton and keyboardist Roddy Bottum traded vocals and the band delved into the song’s haunting final third.

Faith No More also offered up a web exclusive performance of their cover of the Commodores classic, “Easy,” which they originally released as a single in 1992. Like the studio version, Faith No More deftly slipped into the song’s tasteful smooth funk stylings even as guitarist Jon Hudson picked out a taut, ragged guitar solo.

Sol Invictus arrives on May 19th and marks Faith No More’s first album since 1997’s Album of the Year. Along with “Superhero,” the band has also offered up album cuts “Cone of Shame” and first single “Motherfucker.” The latter track arrived as a Record Store Day Black Friday exclusive last year and was the outfit’s first piece of new music since originally disbanding in 1998.

Faith No More were afforded an unprecedented level of autonomy on Sol Invictus, releasing the album on their own Ipecac Recordings sub-label Reclamation. “For us to be able to come and say this is the music that we want to make and to have people try to judge that on its own merits without it being colored by other fuckers and other history and other weirdness is exciting for me,” drummer Mike Bordin told Rolling Stone.

Faith No More recently kicked off a colossal summer tour, which will find them playing North America, Europe and South America through September.